


Homecoming Prince

by Morbane



Category: Star Stealing Prince
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Family, Fluff, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 00:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: Gradually, after the events of canon, Snowe has a chance to discover what normalcy means for him.





	Homecoming Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightsMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/gifts).



> Thanks heaps to thedevilchicken for checking this over before reveals!

Snowe had not taken quickly to the habit of writing letters. At first, it had felt too much like writing diary entries; on Sabine, keeping a diary had brought on confusion and blinding headaches as his attempts to put the days in order in his mind strained the spells his parents had laid on the kingdom.

But as the survivors of the island kingdom moved and settled throughout Norin, Lumisia, and further afield, letters were the best way to keep in touch. And it always made Snowe smile to get news from Marth and Valorie and Dominic. So he wrote back - at first, mostly, asking about their news, rather than volunteering any of his own. When he read his letters over, the brief, clipped items he shared about himself sounded to him like the answers to hostile interrogation.

But his correspondents seemed to understand, and the news flowed back and forth among the former inhabitants of Sabine.

After the gaps closed in the sky, and he and Xiri washed up on the peaceful shores of Aldcoast for a second time, he came home from the summer's long struggles to Richard and Vera and River - and also to a small stack of letters. Two from Valorie, one from Gregory, one from Bowen, and one from Jacob, from earlier in the summer, discussing a journey he and Kathryn had made through the desert. Snowe shuddered to imagine how events might have fallen if their visit to Barina had coincided with his own, remembering how ruthlessly Sephi had dealt with him. But Jacob's letter held only descriptions of the transports and the city and notes on the healing temple. An ordinary visit to people living ordinary lives. As it might be again, if he went back.

Snowe found himself more eager than usual to pick up his pen and write back to everyone, and more daunted than ever about what to say. 

"I miss everyone," he confessed to Astra, at the end of an evening in which Astra, Hiante, Erio, Richard, Vera, River, and Snowe had come together in Richard and Vera's house to share a meal.

Astra and Hiante were planning a month of travelling through the mainland, now that Hiante was accustomed to his twice-restored body and now that the demons and lords had agreed on a truce. Snowe had promised to stay in Aldcoast to help Erio with the shop again for a while - even though Zilia's magic had healed him physically, he felt worn out - or maybe, shakily new. It was odd having Xiri gone from his head, in ways he couldn't easily describe. It felt wrong as well as right. But more right every day, and Snowe was looking forward to eventually feeling whole.

"I'll tell them how much you miss them," Astra promised. "And if you write letters, I'll deliver them!"

Snowe had to sigh at that.

Vera, overhearing them, looked thoughtful. "I miss a lot of people too," she confessed. "And I would so love for everyone to meet River. Do you think you could ask Marth and Sharon to visit us here, Astra? Maybe in the new year, whenever it is their inn isn't doing as much business?"

Out of that idea grew a plan that seemed to work its way into every letter written by the Sabine survivors through the colder months: at the end of winter, they would hold a reunion, to celebrate the end of that winter - and their freedom from a winter that would never end. 

Those who could travel would assemble at the manor on the cape, north of Aldcoast, where Astra and Relenia had fought phantoms several months before.

The manor had been abandoned for some months, and then, just before Astra and Hiante had returned from their travels, a relative of the last inhabitants had moved down from Lumisia to take it over and restore it. On the agreement that they would be able to hire it out for their reunion, both Snowe and Astra helped out with hammering, sanding, and painting. Astra had become involved because she wanted to learn more about the family that had lived there, and the ghost boy who had helped her, and Snowe because he wanted to find out what he was capable of as he recovered.

He found himself very popular among the other labourers; everyone loved a crew member who could quickly and easily heal blisters or a sore back, and in one case, a wrenched wrist. 

"You should go up north-east to where they're extending the rail line," Garl, a man from Virin, told him. "They'll be carving out a long tunnel over the next year. They'd love someone like you."

Snowe had never thought of himself as frail, exactly - even when those around him seemed to treat him as if he were made of glass. But he'd also never thought of himself as distinctively _strong_. That opinion was changing.

In the end, with the manor finished, he did travel to the end of the rail line and speak to the construction workers there, and he felt almost sad that he had to return for the Sabine reunion.

He arrived back only a week before Relenia and Anastasia, and then Dominic followed, and Marth and Sharon were the next to arrive. Valorie, Gregory, and Heather came with the children, but without Brian, who was keeping their Virin inn running with a couple of employees.

Everyone remarked on how healthy Snowe looked - some with an air of astonishment that Snowe wasn't sure how to take. Everyone seemed very pleased for him, at least.

For his own part, Snowe was startled by how much the Sabine children had grown. The _other_ Sabine children, he reminded himself, given that he, in his way, was one of them. Charles asked Snowe and Astra about their travels with the attitude of someone who longed to be off and across the mainland on his own, and Julia, rather than playing with the other children, hung around the grown-ups as if hoping to become one by association.

"They're growing up so fast," he said.

"Tell me about it," Lily said, smiling at him. She had just finished cooing over River and handing her back to a beaming Vera. "But even now, Snowe, you're not _so_ different in age from them. Just think, in forty years you might feel like peers again." It was a teasing comment, and an incredibly startling thought.

Surrounded by the survivors of Sabine, noisy and warm and opinionated and glad to be in the same building together, accepted without words as one of them, Snowe felt a sense of belonging that ached with its keenness. He felt if he had something back that had been missing since Lorel - since he came back to Sabine Castle from Astra's tower and found every door barred.

"I guess," he murmured, "this is what it's like to have a family."

Behind him, someone coughed. "Ah, Prince Snowe. I was hoping you'd say that - after I introduced myself."

Snowe turned, puzzled, to see a newcomer he'd never seen before, with Sharon smiling hopefully at his elbow. He didn't recognise him, but he recognised his features - the fineness of his hair, the curves of his brows and jaw. Snowe's cousin Matreya had said she saw his mother in him. Snowe could see his mother's resemblance in this man.

"You're..."

"I'm your mother's younger brother - Branden," the man confirmed. "Your uncle."

Snowe frowned a little, suddenly uncertain, not wanting to be impolite, but caught aback and trying to remember what he'd learned about his mother's history and where Branden might fit.

"I thought you'd have questions," Branden said wryly. "Let's sit down and talk it out."

When the prophecy had been made that caused Lina to be shut up in a tower, Branden had only been a teenager at the time. He had run away.

"They wanted to make me the heir after Lina, and I didn't want to be king," he explained - rueful, but with the pragmatism of having had a long time after to consider the effects of that decision. "I thought it should be Lina or nobody. I couldn't do much if I stayed, so I left, to leave them with no choice."

"And then..." Snowe wasn't sure how to continue. He didn't know how to ask where Branden had been when Sabine burned down, or how he must have felt.

"And then Sabine burned, and there was nothing for me to go back to even if I'd wanted to," Branden said simply. "It was terrible, and terrifying. And it was freeing, having nothing to be a prince of." 

Snowe snorted despite himself.

"I never expected to hear from Lina again," Branden said. "And I'm sorry I never did." Snowe tensed.

"She was a complicated person," Branden said quietly. "I knew that better than anyone."

Snowe reflected that he had just as much reason to know that, but this was still a better start than he'd had with Matreya. Branden, at least, didn't seem to expect Snowe to talk about what a wonderful person Lina had been, as a mother and a queen.

"I have some of her books, too," Branden said. "I heard about your demon... If I'd heard about it before the lords did, I might have had some ideas for you. But... given everything that your friends have been telling me, it's better it worked out this way."

"Thank you," Snowe said carefully. He certainly never meant to follow in his parents' footsteps by creating increasingly complicated, dangerous spells and summoning demons. He'd met about as many demons as he could handle, at this point, and that included the ones he liked. But - again - it felt strange, both wrong and right, to imagine that he had had other options than those that nearly brought about the end of the world.

"I see I've given you a lot to think about," Branden said, getting up from the bench they were sitting on. "Perhaps we should leave things there for the moment. But, Snowe, if you have questions, please ask them. I'm glad to talk about this, after all this time. I'm glad I had a chance to meet you."

Snowe nodded, dazed, and stayed sitting by himself - laughter and raucous talk just around the corner, through a hallway, through a door. By himself, but not alone. At any time, he could join the others - the people who were _his_ people, even though he wasn't a prince any more, his parents who'd chosen him, even though his original parents had left him, and his friends, who'd stuck with him through life and death. And life again.

He was home among these people, and even if he left, to travel, to work, to find out more about his past, he wouldn't have to leave that home behind.


End file.
